At which point in a tit for tat does it become ok to send that image and those wishes with it?

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

urrrhhhm. Happy Siftiversary? ... :-(

I will hold my vote until hopefully the accused weighs in. Was this provoked, was it many rounds of continuously escalating tit-for-tat? Taken on its own - this does seem like harassment.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Can we please recognise that we live in a world made up of shades of gray?

The tit-for-tat - "this was discarded so we must immediately discard these 10 other videos which I feel are worse" needs to stop.

We work by consensus and on a case by case basis, if you have a bunch of posts that think may be on the borderline of that gray area - by all means, let's discuss it.

Wow, that first spiel by Michael Smerconish has got to be some of the most reprehensible diatribe I have ever heard.

Is this shmuck not aware of rendition, does he really think that Guantanamo is the only incidence of US torture?

Does he really think that convicted high level Al Quaeda members were subjected to torture and not purely common, innocent people volunteered up for cash reward by tribal warlords in Afghanistan among many, many other wrongful detentions?

And geez, the sheer willingness he had to volunteer that he was all for tit-for-tat, everything goes interrogation is just unthinkable, didn't even have to back him into a corner to get him to spit that out.

Fucking wow.

>> ^bamdrew:
I'm sorry, could someone point me to federal laws prohibiting infrared imaging into private property?
I can imagine California having a state law about it, maybe Oregon and Washington...


Bamdrew in order to get a warrant there needs to be a clear Images of evidence. Beyond a doubt. If these officers could not see in from a window, and get a clear concise picture of the "weed" then they did not uphold the standards for a search warrant.

Concerning privacy laws of the United States, privacy is not guaranteed per se by the Constitution of the United States. The Supreme Court of the United States has found that other guarantees have "penumbras" that implicitly grant a right to privacy against government intrusion, for example in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965). In the United States, the right of freedom of speech granted in the First Amendment has limited the effects of lawsuits for breach of privacy. Privacy is regulated in the U.S. by the Privacy Act of 1974, and various state laws.

cited=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy#An_individual_right

You can argue tit for tat over laws, but judging by your comment I can gather that you either are ignorant (its non colloquial form) of the laws, or do not care for privacy.

If no one enforces their rights to privacy then there are no rights at all. I cannot believe that we are arguing over an innate right that all free people should have. Even if that freedom is relative, or imaginary.

As to private property, they cannot be on said property when they took the photos, because that would be a violation of the law. Assuming that they took images from public property, then the likelihood of them getting the images they need for a lawful warrant is very unlikely.

When it comes to the law, the cards are stacked against you, they always are.

Police should not be held up to such a high standard, they are people just like you and me. They have bad days and good days, and their shirts get wrinkles in them just like ours. There are bad apples among the good apples.

But when it comes to drugs and fame, you can always count for the basest of human emotion to come out.

Im sorry but not many of the arguments made by Turek are convincing. Ive only watched 24 minutes so far, but he seems to make a lot of logical jumps. We are moral, therefor there must be a moral giver... and that must be God. No, that does not have to be the only explination, it doesnt have to be God. There are evolutionary point in being moral, watch Professor Hawkins Tit-for-tat to get a glimmer of the beginning to an argument against being immoral. I dont buy Tureks argument just because he says they are true, he better have evidence to back them up more than arguments that sound plausible or believable...

>> ^quantumushroom:
And I'm sorry, but currently... this is kinda how the rest of the world views you.
Then return all the foreign aid so we can spend it on border fences...to keep us "in" of course.

Gee you're a swell guy QM... swell.

Perhaps you might want to look at just how 'great' the US is at giving aid?

Hmmm, well, let's look at these figures, hmm, per capita pretty darn crap... 19th... and that's using figures from 1997, I would bet my left butt cheek it's gotten worse in recent years thanks to Bush.

And what about if we read here Hmmm, it would seem that even with its already poor performance at giving aid, "it “ties” a large share of this aid to the purchase of U.S. goods and services."... ahhh, beautiful, 'tit for tat' if you will, lovely.


Now, good old Australia (my country) rates pretty darn poorly too, depending on the figures either just above or just below the US... and we've had a pretty bad environmental track record along with the horrendous US of A... but while this: "Along with Australia, it is one of only two CDI countries that have not signed the Kyoto Protocol." was true up until this year, our new prime minister ratified Kyoto pretty much as soon as he took power.

Hopefully we're on our way up.

I really hope your next president, who'd better be Obama and not... shudder, McCain, will be able to lift up your country, because the people that you QM, love so much are pulling the country, and the world, down, down down.

I think the decision then was 2week ban first offense. permanent ban for 2nd.

as MG linked to Dag:

>> ^dag:
Beyond QM I think this is also a referendum on voting and the community. I see this vindictive behavior as a kind of vote fraud.
I don't want it to become commonplace, as it will lead to acrimony and possibly the complete degradation of the site from a great community to a perpetual shit-flinging festival.
So I take this very seriously as an important decision-point for VideoSift.
On the other hand, as much as I disagree with QM in almost all his comments, I recognise that it's important to protect dissenting voices and alternative views. I don't support an outright ban.
In this case, (and any future cases) I recommend a 2-week suspension, with complete banning for a second offense.
We should apply the same penalty to Mkone's inane copycat downvoting spreee. (if you're going to be a jerk - at least be an original one).
Also, I don't agree with "retribution" tit-for-tat down voting sprees.
What say ye all?

"In this case, (and any future cases) I recommend a 2-week suspension, with complete banning for a second offense.

We should apply the same penalty to Mkone's inane copycat downvoting spreee. (if you're going to be a jerk - at least be an original one).

Also, I don't agree with "retribution" tit-for-tat down voting sprees."''

I agree 250% with Dag, that's better then that measly 110% that everyone else talks about. The last thing anyone who cares about this site wants is a torn troll infested yousift.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Beyond QM I think this is also a referendum on voting and the community. I see this vindictive behavior as a kind of vote fraud.

I don't want it to become commonplace, as it will lead to acrimony and possibly the complete degradation of the site from a great community to a perpetual shit-flinging festival.

So I take this very seriously as an important decision-point for VideoSift.

On the other hand, as much as I disagree with QM in almost all his comments, I recognise that it's important to protect dissenting voices and alternative views. I don't support an outright ban.

In this case, (and any future cases) I recommend a 2-week suspension, with complete banning for a second offense.

We should apply the same penalty to Mkone's inane copycat downvoting spreee. (if you're going to be a jerk - at least be an original one).

Also, I don't agree with "retribution" tit-for-tat down voting sprees.

What say ye all?

I am sick and tired of people treating people with different political opinions like they have Ebola.

And it drives me CRAZY that the President and Congress play tit-for-tat instead of making decisions that are good for America.

Very interesting, thanks Fed.

There was more on the subject of 'the prisoners dilemma' and the 'tit-for-tat' theory in this post by Benjee:
http://www.videosift.com/video/Richard-Dawkins-Nice-Guys-Finish-First-documentary-47min

Dawkins has also talked about eugenics in other interviews, stating that it does indeed work insofar as the favouring certain traits in reproduction. The only caveat seemed to be that you can start seeing odd side effects. He sited an example on foxes (I think it was) that were being bred to be less aggressive, but they would later start to develop spotted fur and look something akin to domesticated animals. If I can find the interview, I shall link to it.

"In emails released by Congress on March 15, 2007 "the idea of firing all 93 U.S. attorneys was raised by Karl Rove in early January 2005, indicating Rove was more involved in the plan than previously acknowledged by the White House"

"I've already said too much." - Karl Rove to Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, at the conclusion of a conversation in which he told him that the wife of a Bush administration critic worked for the CIA. Karl Rove has told friends it is possible he still will be indicted for providing false statements to the grand jury."

Tit-for-tat? Am sorry this is called getting caught red-handed. As the man put it himself:

“The will of the American people cannot be subverted in case after case, on issue after issue, year after year, without provoking a strong counter-reaction.”
- Karl Rove

Now there are three types of people to comment on this video.

There is the monster like quantumushroom, which is naturally inclined to hatred, hates, and rationalises its hatred because it thinks it is a man.
There's the animal, or everyday human being such as you might meet on the street. In accordance with the proven evolutionary model of tit-for-tat it is inclined to tolerance. Since it recognises that Islam as a whole is not hostile to it, it does not object to Islam. It is in the majority and therefore has no need to rationalise its attitude, so it merely congratulates itself on its enlightened position.
Then there is the true human being, who is also naturally inclined to tolerance. Recognising that religion is poison the true human masters his instinct and makes the intellectual decision to hate Islam. The true human's hate springs from reason, not emotion; reason is humanity's salvation, not God.

The animals sing the praises of this unremarkable video, eager to demonstrate their allegiance. The monsters spew their bile, to no effect, are opposed, or not, to no effect. The human's contribution is dismissed, pearls before swine.

I am Cassandra.

I found this very uplifting, and makes me wonder whether such 'tit for tat' relationships would form (or even have, already) in parts of Iraq nowadays. Perhaps not in the sense of the trenches in WWI, where the front lines were clearly defined - but where, say, days of non-aggression would be met with a pause in seeking to engage the other side.

It certainly provided a more logical application and definition for the surviving of genes and species in evolution. From the perspective of the individual, it would appear that evolution is cold/harsh/amoral. Where indeed this just isn't always the case - merely the 'unit of measure' for species survival in the grand scheme.